


On the other hand

by inthegrayworld



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Ficlet, Kylo Ren Redemption, Mother-Son Relationship, Other, Sad, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 22:32:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9093670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inthegrayworld/pseuds/inthegrayworld
Summary: General Organa comes face to face with her son for the first time in years.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Taking a break from writing smutty smut for this.  
> One of the things I was looking forward to in the future Star Wars movies was Kylo Ren's reckoning with General Organa. That may still happen in Episode VIII, but I somehow doubt it (I feel like the Star Wars Powers That Be may have determined that particular story would close in Episode IX). Was particularly interested to see what Carrie Fisher might bring to such a scene.  
> Since this may or may not happen anymore, I'd like to suggest one way this scene could have played out.  
> I am on the Kylo Ren Will Be Redemption'd Boat.  
> (Also, just wrote this down relatively quickly, not much editing, it's kinda raw, sorreh).

He was brought in in shackles.

That was just for Command’s peace of mind. The General knew well enough that a pair of laminasteel cuffs wouldn’t restrain him if he didn’t want to be restrained.

And yet they were bringing him down the gangplank now, the business end of two dozen blasters following his transition through the hangar, to the gate, where an aide delivered to him the General’s message verbatim: “Your mother wants to see you.”

The General followed the updates on her personal comlink until they checked him through Command, and then she switched the device off.

Silence was a luxury she rarely had, especially here, in her personal office. Even now, she half-expected a report to ping on one of the many datapads littering her desk, but it seemed that everyone in the Resistance had collectively agreed that now would not be a good time to bother her.

They would have been right.

The bottle of the Good Stuff was hiding behind a stack of papers far to the corner of her desk. She used to keep it in the drawer, saving it for either when something went really really well, or really really badly. After Han, there was about an inch of the stuff left, enough for a couple of good swigs before it was all gone. She decided to take one now.

She had barely set down the glass when the door slid open behind her.

“General,” her aide’s voice was strangely muted. “Um. Kylo Ren is here.”

_Kylo Ren_.

She almost smirked.

“Bring him in.”

She kept her back to the shuffle of guards and mutterings and the clink of shackles entering the room. If she gripped the empty glass any more tightly, it would shatter in her hand.

“Leave us,” she said.

The aide began to bluster, “Do you really think that’s wise, ma’am—“

She turned her head to the side, in a swift, sharp movement.

“—Of course, General, whatever you say.”

The door slid open again, and the boots trampled out, leaving only the gentle sigh of the General’s breath. He did not seem to be breathing at all.

She turned.

She had known she wasn’t ready to see him again. She hadn’t been sure what to expect.

He looked like a scarecrow, tall and gaunt, the long black robes clinging to him meant to intimidate. The lightsaber had been confiscated. Of that infamous mask, there was no sign.

His eyes were on the floor, like they always had been when he was much younger, and he’d been brought to her for shattering a vase, or tugging someone’s hair. But he wasn’t that boy anymore, was he? Under the weight of the silence between them, he turned his gaze upwards.

The General felt something lance into her heart.

She was wrong. He still was.

“Step forward,” the General said.

Wordlessly, he took a step forward.

She leaned back on the desk, arms crossed. Hardness entered her tone.

“Closer, so I can see you.”

The calm he had managed to retain rippled, and for a moment, the General saw his fear. But he stepped forward again, so that if she had reached out, she would have been able to touch him.

This close, she could see how the years had worn through his features. He hadn’t been eating right. There were lines across his forehead and the corners of his mouth that weren’t there before. And of course, there was the scar, a lightsaber cut, from forehead to cheek.

The General struck him across the face.

The slap echoed in the office, although he took it without a sound. He didn’t seem surprised.

“That,” the General said, her voice barely above a whisper, “Is for joining the First Order.”

She had knocked his face to the side, but he did not attempt to turn back towards her. The General didn’t really believed she’d be able to cause him any significant physical hurt. He was a fighter after all. But now, it was as though all the fight had gone out of him.

She slapped him again, on the other side of his face, with the back of her hand.

“That is for destroying Luke’s school,” she said, winded from the effort that had taken.

A thin line of blood trickled down the corner of his lips. His eyes had gone bright, but he said nothing at all.

The General slapped him a third time, so hard that red blossomed all the way up the side of his face. There was a lash in her voice that she couldn’t help.

“And that,” she said. “Is for Han.”

He flinched at the name, and for a moment she thought he might say something, through the anguish that crumpled his features. But then he straightened up, returning to cold, calm, acceptance.

The General gave the back of her hand a rub before returning to the desk and refilling her glass.

“And…that’s it,” she said to him.

He looked up, genuinely shocked.

“That’s it?” His voice—that voice she hadn’t heard in years—cut through the room. “That’s all?”

She raised the glass to her lips, taking in the aroma.

“For you? No.” She tilted her head to the side. “You, my son, have years and years of that ahead of you. It will never really end, until the day you die.”

She took just a sip, just enough to soothe her throat. “From me though, that’s it.”

He looked a sight now, still rooted to the spot, but overtaken with restlessness. She could imagine his mind whirling, thrown back to every single way he thought this scenario would play out, finding he had been prepared for anything but this.

He wheeled back towards her, almost spitting out the word, “Why?”

The General swirled her glass and drank, taking her time. The flavor came up in waves that spoke to her of vast vineyards under the sun, of gentle brooks, and summers that felt like they’d never end. She looked down at the empty glass with just a bit of regret. That was the last bottle of the Good Stuff from Alderaan.

She turned back to her son.

“When I think of my life, I think of it in terms of gains and losses,” she said. “As a child, I lost my mother and father. But then I gained step-parents who loved me, and whom I loved back.

“But then I would lose them, along with my entire world, to the Empire,” she paused. The memory still ached, after all these years, a wound that would never entirely closed.

“I gained a new family in the Rebellion,” she said. “Fine, brave people. There would be nights of just drinking, and singing, and weeping about the homes we’d lost. But by the daytime they’d roll out, in their X-wings or speeders or whatever, and a lot of them never came back.”

She glanced up at him. His eyes had not shifted from her face.

“On the other hand, while I lost comrades, I gained a brother,” she smiled at the thought of Luke, at how young he’d been on the so-called rescue mission that had brought them together. Along with Han.

“I even gained a husband,” she said. “And there were years of something that felt like peace. Good years. I even gained a son.”

She turned back down to her glass, remembered it was empty.

“On the other hand, I would lose my son to the same thing that took my father. I would lose my brother to his grief. And I would lose my husband to sorrow, and…a lightsaber, right?”

She watched him through the curve of the glass, his features doubly distorted by the memory of what he’d done and the arc of the cup.

“All these losses,” the General said, her voice low. “After years and years of losing, you just sort of wonder what the point is anymore. Was there ever a point in anything you’ve ever done? Why bother?”

She set the glass down with a sharp rap.

“But then, this happens.”

She looked at him anew.

He saw the change in her expression and looked no more like a boy than he did in this moment.

The General no longer wept - it was a joke among the inner circle of the Resistance that she had literally run out of tears. But now her voice was thick with emotion, and her eyes were bright.

“Half the Resistance thinks you’re here to assassinate me,” she said. “But I know that you’re here of your own choice. I can feel it in the Force.”

She took a step towards him, the palms of her hands turned outwards.

“And I have lost enough to know that when someone—someone I thought I’d lost forever—actually comes back to me, I do not turn him away.”

She would have drawn him to her then and there but he stepped away.

“Don’t—“ It seemed that he had not run out of tears. “I killed dad.”

The General let her hands fall to her sides. It was difficult to walk the edge of the chasm created by Han’s absence without falling in.

“I felt it, you know,” the General said. “When he died”

Every single moment of it, up until his echo had disappeared from the Force.

“I could feel him. I’d like to think he could feel me as well, that he knew I was with him until the very end.”

She looked up at her son. He'd certainly grown tall.

“Do you know what his very last thought was?” the General asked.

He blinked, the whites of his eyes had gone red.

“That he forgave you.”

All at once, his resolve shattered. He doubled over, knees hitting the floor, hair coming down to hide his face, but he could not keep the sobs that welled up from breaking. Knelt before her, he seemed no taller than he was the last time she had seen him like this.

She did not look at him, she would allow him that dignity. But as she did before, she lay her hand on his head, stroking back his hair.

“Welcome home, Ben,” she said.

**Author's Note:**

> RIP Carrie Fisher, who like many of us here, wrote down words when she was feeling shitty in order to feel a little better.


End file.
